Discover famous and infamous Bordeaux celebrity inhabitants
Born at the Château de la Brède, south of Bordeaux, Montesquieu was a French philosopher, social commentator and political thinker of some renown. He wrote works commenting on some of the strange habits of common society and most significantly wrote about the importance of political liberty.
The Bordeaux-born author, François Mauriac, was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1952 "for the deep spiritual insight and the artistic intensity with which he has in his novels penetrated the drama of human life".
Michel de Montaigne wrote some of the first ever 'essays' - works written from the author's personal perspective - which are today some of the most frank and easy-to-follow from this period.